Nov 8, 2018​Alex Backman reports o. The pressing issues south-of-the-border with regard to the illegal invasion of Mexico and the US by SIAs and OTMs who illegally stormed through the Mexico-Guatemala border and have established their camp in Mexico City with help of the incoming leftist socialist regime. At least 2,000 immigrants marches and paralyzed Mexico's capital on their intent to reach the UN office in the exclusive are of Polanco in the northwest of the city.

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UTT’s Recommendations for the Next Attorney GeneralThe FBI, DHS as well as other federal agencies possess a massive amount of evidence detailing the strength and organization of the Islamic Movement in America. The evidence reveals that all of the prominent Islamic organizations in the United States have the same objectives as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State – a caliphate ruled under sharia (Islamic law).Yet, more than 17 years after 9/11/01, federal leaders have not only done nothing about this threat – which constitutes criminal negligence – they have relied on the leaders of easily identifiable jihadi (“terrorists” under U.S. law) organizations to gain an “understanding” of the threat.This should help the reader understand why America is losing the war against the Global Islamic Movement.UTT believes this war must be won at the local level with knowledgable citizens forcing pastors, sheriffs, police chiefs, city councils, and others to engage the enemy and aggressively purge them from their cities and counties through all legal means available. [UTT trains citizens, police and local leaders on how to do just that]With that said, if the next U.S. Attorney General understands the Islamic and Marxist threats to our Constitutional Republic and understands America’s founding principles, that person could have a significant impact by prosecuting the major Islamic organizations for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, materially supporting terrorism, sedition, and a number of other crimes under federal statutes.We cannot win the war this way, but it would have a significant impact and give local communities room to maneuver.Two such men UTT recommends to be America’s next Attorney General are Andrew C. McCarthy and the Honorable Joseph Schmitz.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York who spent 20 years as a prosecutor and has testified before Congress as an expert on issues of constitutional law, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement. McCarthy led the terrorism prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and 11 other jihadists for conducting jihad against the United States including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Mr. McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and a Fox News contributor who speaks and writes widely on law and national security, radical Islam, politics, and culture.Andrew C. McCarthy is the author of Grand Jihad and Willful Blindness, demonstrating he possesses an understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood network, the sharia that drives it, and is not afraid to speak about it.

The Honorable Joseph Schmitz Inspector General for the Department of Defense from April 2002 to September 2005 with statutory policy oversight responsibility for roughly 60,000 auditors, investigators, inspectors, law enforcement officers, and oversight professionals throughout the Department of Defense. For his service as Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Mr. Schmitz was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award presented by the Secretary of Defense to non-career federal employees. Mr. Schmitz is also the author of The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and other Constitutional ‘Enemies, Foreign and Domestic.'” Mr. Schmitz is a 1978 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who also served as a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserves as the Inspector General of the Naval Reserve Intelligence CommandMr. Schmitz has published numerous articles and has testified as a constitutional expert before the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs and Judiciary Committees. From 1995 until 2002, he was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he developed and taught a seminar on advanced Constitutional Law.Both of these men have a deep understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the United States, sharia as the enemy threat doctrine, and both understand America’s founding principles and what must be done to keep them intact.America needs Andrew C. McCarthy or Joseph Schmitz as our next Attorney General._______________________________________________________________

Human technology is responsible for more loss from fire than any other cause. But reducing fire’s impact will require changes to how people live, not just to the infrastructure that lets them do so.KENDRA ATLEEWORKMAY 25, 2018 The Cocos Fire burns in San Marcos, California, in 2014.​MIKE BLAKE / REUTERSIn October 2017, 250 square miles burned in Northern California, destroying6,000 homes and businesses and killing 44 people. For now, the cause of these fires has not been determined. The private utility company Pacific Gas and Electric, known to Californians as PG&E, is under investigation. Total damagefor the Northern California wildfires comes to $9 billion. PG&E has started stockpiling cash.

In California, this is a familiar story. Three years ago, in February of 2015, one-third of the houses in my remote neighborhood in Eastern California burned down. Here, before the fire, 100 houses lay scattered across the leeward flank of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The people who live here spend their time walking steep roads, listening to crickets, chasing mule deer out of the garden, and looking over a desert valley below. Days after the fire, my neighbor, Cassie, wasn’t doing any of these things. Instead, she stood inside her smoking foundation. Tall and easygoing with freckles on her nose, Cassie had come home from college that winter to sift rubble with her mom and dad. Under different circumstances, we might have hiked together or skated frozen ponds. I used to carpool with her family to school, and I remember her house, wooden and gorgeous and overlooking a ravine from which flames later rose.We wore rubber gloves to sort the rubble, but there was not much rubble to sort. The air smelled of sulfur, and mostly only dust lingered, as if a great storm had picked up the walls and roof and furniture and lifted everything away.Like the 2017 fires in Northern California, the cause of the fire that burned our neighborhood, according to the government database, is still under investigation. One source is more likely than others: On that day, strong winds whipped power lines that hung over dry brush.

A power line can start a fire if it breaks in the wind. It can start a fire when a tree or a branch falls across it, or when lines slap together, or when equipment gets old and fails without anyone noticing. In 2015, fires started by electrical lines and equipment burned more acres in California than any other cause. Power lines sparked fires that set records in New Mexico and fed a blaze in Great Smoky Mountains National Park that entered the city of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and killed 14 people in 2016. In recent years, they have consistently been among the three major causes of California wildfires.Hurricane-force winds periodically shriek off the Pacific and rattle California. Wind strong enough to break a power line spreads fire fast. This past October, when I sniffed the air and found that California was once again burning, I looked around and saw many wires thatching an orange sky. I was visiting my aunt in Northern California, 50 miles from the fires. We sat inside and watched the noon sun dim.My childhood home didn’t burn the year Cassie’s did. But it should have. Dry leaves lay in piles beside the wooden walls. The volunteer fire captain’s house across the street burned, although he maintained plenty of defensible space. And so I wait, even now, for the next windstorm.In the months after my neighborhood burned, I waited fearfully, which means I waited angrily. In particular, I hoped power companies would put their lines underground. In 1995, fire-related costs ate up 16 percent of the U.S. Forest Service budget. By 2015, half of the budget was devoted to fire. Some of us wondered how safe our power can be when utility-company profits drive power operations. PG&E has been found guilty of negligence before in wildfires, and some of us point at negligence and greed again this time.There’s a precedent for fire occurring alongside an infrastructure that drives economic growth. From 1870 until the 1920s, most major fires in America were caused by locomotives. We fixed that problem, says Stephen Pyne, a firefighter-turned-historian. “New laws were enforced, fines and lawsuits applied economic pressure, engines were compelled to replace coal with oil as fuel, suitable spark arrestors were invented, rights-of-way were cleaned of debris, lines were patrolled.” And so locomotives started wildfires for decades, but not forever.Like railroads, power lines deliver a seemingly limitless supply of a product wherever people want it. On a good day, the grid makes life easy. Far from urban centers, in my house up the side of a mountain, in an ocean of dry brush, the lights still flick on.In general, power lines only cause fire when things go wrong above ground. Even utility companies agree, after a 2012 study by the Edison Electric Institute revealed that underground lines had fewer problems during storms and were better for public safety all around. But California has 210,000 miles of electrical lines. The cost to put lines underground is about $1 million per mile to start, and much more in mountainous areas. That’s five to 10 times what it costs to hang a line overhead, which usually makes underground lines logistically or economically impractical. In North Carolina, for example, a plan to put power lines underground was dropped because utility rates in the impacted area would have risen by 125 percent.And despite the impulse to blame industry, the power companies aren’t entirely in control of the solution. California utility companies don’t get to decide how much line they install underground; that matter is regulated by the Public Utilities Commission, in order to “protect consumers,” “safeguard the environment,” and “assure Californians’ access to safe and reliable utility infrastructure,” according to the organization’s stated mission. The commission balances risk with cost and limits how much utility companies can spend by putting wires underground. Other improvements to the grid are being investigated, including better line insulation and technology that could anticipate line failure and shut off power in advance. But all of these solutions will be slow and costly to implement. I might get angry with utility companies, but I like to turn lights on in the dark.In the United States, fossil fuels burned to make electricity and heat put more greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere than any industry. My neighbors’ houses burned amid the worst drought California had seen in a millennium. In recent decades, wildfires in the American West have begun to range farther and burn longer. Scientists from eight universities got together in 2016 and looked at tendencies in wildfire and the ways we manage wildfire. They concluded that “wildfires across western North America have increased in number and size over the past three decades, and this trend will continue in response to further warming.” They called this a “new era.”Fires burn bigger areas and destroy three times as many houses as they used to. What was once a problem in June, July, and August now extends through November and beyond. I evacuated for avalanche warnings in the winters of my childhood. In February 2015, I wandered my neighborhood and gaped at new patches of sky, as smoke seeped out of the ground.

When a fire comes up the side of the mountain and destroys our homes, we say: natural disaster. When lightning starts that fire, we say: natural disaster. When power lines start that fire, we still say: natural disaster. Deliberate debris burning, fireworks, and rogue campfires are among the most common causes of so-called wildfire in some parts of California. Still, when people consider wildfire—even wildfire caused by human tools—it seems to us as inescapable as lightning.Three years after her house burned down, I asked my childhood neighbor Cassie whether she felt the fire that destroyed her house was inevitable. She lives in San Francisco now, where she prepares environmental impact reports for federal and state agencies. Her parents live in a house rebuilt atop the ashes of the old. “The smell of smoke made me nauseous,” Cassie told me, while Napa and Sonoma burned last fall. “I woke up in the middle of the night because I could smell it. It felt so close.”Cassie did not consider the loss of her home unavoidable. When people treat fire as an inevitability, she said, its consequences become divorced from human behavior. What she saw on the local news after the Northern California fires were the stories of “people and families and homes,” over and over. It makes sense, because people’s lives are changed, she said. “But that’s always the focus, instead of the bigger issue ... instead of, this could have been prevented, and there’s a reason that it happened, and it’s connected to our infrastructure. But I just don’t think it’s something people want to talk about.” It sickened her, to feel fire’s heat, to smell its smoke, without facing its implications.And those implications are complicated. “Many of the problems of fire management do not have technical fixes,” Pyne, the fire historian, wrote during the Northern California fires. “They depend on social choices hammered out in politics—appropriate land use, the purpose of public lands, competing economic interests, cultural values, and philosophies.”It’s possible to update technology to dodge disaster, to a point. We can make advance warning systems for earthquakes, cloak first responders in nasa-developed fire suits, and mitigate rising sea levels with permeable pavement and rain gardens. We can also update technology to avoid having to change the assumptions that cause some of the problems in the first place. When locomotives burned forests, people changed the mechanics of trains—they didn’t reevaluate the long-term viability of rail. The need to move thousands of tons of lumber and coal and food and passengers at high speeds through forest and prairie and desert did not come into question. It’s easier to find a quick fix than it is to change culture.Some biologists contend that our brains did not evolve to conceive of the long-term consequences of our choices; that we are not primed to master deep time but to put out small fires⁠, if you will. Yet it appears we have also evolved to comprehend the far future, if only in flashes. We operate, Pyne writes, “not according to strict evolutionary selection but in the realm of culture, which is to say, of choice and confusion.”

The night our neighborhood went up in smoke, I was 2,000 miles away. I sat on the floor and held a phone to my ear while my father described our mountain, burning. I gathered the things I had taken from my childhood bedroom around me like talismans and I imagined the world in flames.My house survived the fire because the volunteer fire captain, who drove up his street in a fire truck and saw his own house burning, had the presence of mind to keep moving, to keep working to save what remained. He or another volunteer doused the flames that devoured a pile of railroad ties in our yard, flames that could have laddered up our brush hill and laced fingers through the railings of the porch.Eventually, the scientists say, wildfires in the western United States might dwindle. This could happen when precipitation withers to the point that vegetation doesn’t come back. The fires will end when there is nothing more to burn. Cassie and I would like to choose a world in which there is a lot left to lose—we would prefer to protect our mountain homes, not to mention our larger communities and the global climate, and direct our lives in ways that will save what we love. Others would, too. Last October somebody put up signs in Sonoma that said, “The Love in the Air Is Thicker Than the Smoke.”For those of us living in the path of wildfire, we have come to understand that we must live with it, that no quick solution awaits us, that changing the ways we think and being open to new ways of living might protect our communities. Pyne writes that fire as we know it is “largely the outcome of what this creature has done, and not done.” Humans have changed fire, and fire will change us, one way or another. We can try to choose the way. Maybe this means smarter technology, already in the works. Maybe it means making new relationships with fire, making fire a tool, listening to the people who understand fire when it’s time to rebuild and then rebuilding in different ways, or even in different places.The scientists say we can choose to accept wildfire as “as an inevitable catalyst of change,” and we can adapt. Here, in a nation that currently suppresses 95 percent of all wildfires, at great cost and with questionable efficacy, it might be best to focus more on guiding the way fire burns. Communities can put more resources into controlled burns—more than 99 percent of which stay within selected boundaries—and teach the public about their benefit. Local governments can help educate and support landowners in fuel removal and property protection. And both residents and developers can think carefully before they build farther into wilderness, which is, after all, fire’s country.And yet it’s hard to work to change more than the technology—to change ourselves in order to accommodate and support these adaptations. It’s easy instead to slip back into life as we know it, to forget what a new era may ask of us, even when the stakes are very high. “Despite the fact that I feel very passionately about a lot of these issues, and they impact me personally, I don’t think about it day to day,” Cassie said. “At all. Ever.” And neither do I. This is life, the slow build of the wind on the Pacific, the heave of power over our heads._______________________________________________________________

By Publius HuldahNovember 15, 2018Central to the silly arguments made by the "Convention of States Project" (COSP) is their claim that 200 years of Supreme Court opinions have increased the powers of the federal government (as well as legalized practices such as abortion); that all these opinions are "the Law of the Land"; and we need an Article V convention so we can get amendments to the Constitution which take away all these powers the Supreme Court gave the federal government.

But the text of Article V contradicts COSP's claim. Article V shows that our Constitution can be amended only when three fourths of the States ratify proposed amendments. The Supreme Court has no power to amend our Constitution. And it's impossible for an amendment to take away powers our Constitution doesn't grant.

1. First Principles

Let's analyze COSP's silly argument. We begin by looking at First Principles:

The Judicial Branch was created by Art. III, §1, US Constitution. Accordingly, it is a "creature" of the Constitution. 1

The federal government came into existence when the States, acting through special ratifying conventions held in each of the States, ratified the Constitution.2

Since the Judicial Branch is merely a "creature" of the Constitution, it follows that it is subordinate to the Constitution, and is completely subject to its terms. It may not annul the superior authority of the States which created the Judicial Branch when they ratified the Constitution; 3and as a mere "creature" of the Constitution, it may NOT change the Constitution under which it holds its existence! 4

2. Supreme Court Opinions are not"the Law of the Land"

Article VI, cl.2, US Constit., the "supremacy clause," defines "supreme Law of the Land" as the Constitution, and acts of Congress and Treaties which are authorized by the Constitution. Supreme Court opinions aren't included!

So why does everybody say, as we heard during the Kavanagh confirmation hearings, that Roe v. Wade is "the Law of the Land"? Because Americans have been conditioned to believe that the Supreme Court is superior to our Constitution; that their opinions about our Constitution are "law," and we are bound by them unless and until they issue new opinions which release us from their previous opinions.

3. Organic & statutory law and the totally different "common law" precedent followed in courts

Americans have been conditioned to ignore the huge distinctions between organic and statutory law, on the one hand; and the common law which is embodied in the precedents followed by judges in litigation.

Organic Law

Black's Law Dictionary defines "organic law" as "The fundamental law, or constitution, of a state or nation, written or unwritten; 5 that law or system of laws or principles which defines and establishes the organization of its government."

The Articles of Confederation was our first Constitution. It was replaced by our Constitution of 1787 when it was ratified June 21, 1788. The Northwest Ordinance was superseded by the transformation of the area covered by the Ordinance into States [pursuant to Art. IV, §3, cl. 2, US Constit.].

Do you see how absurd is the claim that the Supreme Court, a mere "creature" of the Constitution of 1787, has the power to change the Organic Law of the United States?

"Body of written laws that have been adopted by the legislative body."

As we saw above, all legislative Powers granted by our Constitution are vested in Congress (Art. I, §1). Acts of Congress qualify as part of the "supreme Law of the Land" only when they are made pursuant to Authority granted to Congress by the Constitution (Art.VI, cl. 2). When Acts of Congress are not authorized by the Constitution, they are mere usurpations and must be treated as such.6Common LawThe "common law" applied in courts in the English-speaking countries came from the Bible.7 The Bible has much to say about our relations with each other: don't murder people, don't maim them, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't tell lies about people, don't be negligent, don't cheat or defraud people, and such. The Bible provides for Judges to decide disputes between people and empowers Judges to require the person who has violated these precepts to pay restitution to the person whom he harmed. So, e.g., the Biblical prohibitions against bearing false witness and slandering people became our modern day concepts of slander, libel, and defamation. These principles were applied in the English courts from time immemorial, and are applied in American Courts. Modern day American attorneys litigate these common law concepts all the time. So if I am representing a client in an action for say, fraud, I look at the previous court opinions in the jurisdiction on fraud, and see how the courts in that jurisdiction have defined fraud – i.e., I look for "precedents" – the courts' previous opinions on the subject – and I expect the Judge on my case to obey that precedent. 8THIS is the "common law." It is "law" in the sense that it originated with God's Word; and from "time immemorial" has been applied in the Courts of English speaking countries. But this precedent is binding or persuasiveonlyon courts.9 As precedent for judges to follow, it is never "the law of the land"!So, keep these three categories – organic, statutory, and common law – separate, and do not confuse court precedent with the "Law of the Land." The latter is restricted to the Organic Law, and statutes and treaties authorized by the Organic Law.

Now let's look at the constitutional jurisdiction of the federal courts.

4. What kinds of cases do federal courts have constitutional authority to hear?The ten categories of cases the Judicial Branch has authority to hear are enumerated at Art. III, §2, cl. 1, US Constit. 10The first category is cases "arising under this Constitution." In Federalist No. 80 (2nd para), Hamilton shows these cases concern "provisions expressly contained" in the Constitution. He then points to the restrictions on the authority of the State Legislatures [listed at Art. I, §10], and shows that if a State exercises any of those prohibited powers, and the federal government sues the State, the federal courts would have authority to hear the case (3rd & 13th paras).

So if a State enters into a Treaty, or grants Letters of Marque & Reprisal, or issues paper money, or does any of the other things prohibited by Art. I, §10, the controversy would "arise under the Constitution" and the federal courts have constitutional authority to hear the case.

Likewise, if a State passed a law which violated the Constitution – say one requiring candidates in their State for US Senate to be 40 years of age – instead of the 30 years prescribed at Art. I, §3, cl. 3 – the federal courts have constitutional authority to hear the case.So the purpose of this category is to authorize the Judicial Branch to enforce the Constitution – not re-write it!! 11Now let's look at one way the Supreme Court butchered our Constitution in order to strike down State Laws they didn't like.

5. How the Supreme Court violated the "arising under" clause to hear casesthey have no constitutional authority to hear

Let's use "abortion" to illustrate the usurpation. Obviously, "abortion" is not "expressly contained" in the Constitution. So abortion doesn't "arise under" the Constitution; and the constitutionality of State Statutes prohibiting abortion doesn't fit into any of the other nine categories of cases federal courts have authority to hear. Accordingly, federal courts have no judicial power over it. The Supreme Court had to butcher words in our Constitution in order to usurp power to legalize abortion. This is what they did:The original intent of §1 of the 14th Amendment was to extend citizenship to freed slaves and to provide constitutional authority for the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866. That Act protected freed slaves from Southern Black Codes which denied them God-given rights. 12Now look at §1 where it says, "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;"

That's the "due process" clause. As Professor Berger points out [ibid.], it has a precise meaning which goes back to the Magna Charta: it means that a person's life, liberty or property can't be taken away from him except by the judgment of his peers pursuant to a fair trial.But this is how the Supreme Court perverted the genuine meaning of that clause: In Roe v. Wade (1973), they looked at the word, "liberty" in the due process clause and said, "liberty" means "privacy," and "privacy" means "a woman can kill her unborn baby." 13And they claimed they had jurisdiction to overturn State Laws criminalizing abortion because the issue arises under the Constitution at §1 of the 14th Amendment! [ibid.]

The Supreme Court redefined words in Our Constitution to justify the result theywanted in the case before them.

The Supreme Court didn't "enforce" the Constitution – they butchered it to fabricate a "constitutional right" to kill unborn babies.

And the lawyers said, "It's the Law of the Land"; the People yawned; and the clergy said, "the Bible says we have to obey civil government – besides, we don't want to lose our 501 (c) (3) tax exemption!"

6. What are the remedies when the Supreme Court violates the Constitution?The opinions of which the convention lobby complains constitute violations of our Constitution. 14 The three remedies our Framers provided or advised for judicial violations of our Constitution are:

1. In Federalist No. 81 (8th para), Hamilton shows Congress can impeach and remove from office federal judges who violate the Constitution. Congress is competent to decide whether federal judges have violated the Constitution!Impeachment is their "check" on the Judicial Branch.

2. In Federalist No. 78 (6th para), Hamilton shows the Judicial Branch must rely on the Executive Branch to enforce its judgments. If the President, in the exercise of his independent judgment and mindful of his Oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution," determines that an opinion of a federal court is unconstitutional; his Duty is to refuse to enforce it. The President is also competent to decide whether federal judges have violated the Constitution! Refusing to enforce their unconstitutional judgments is his "check" on the Judicial Branch.

3. On the Right & Duty of the States – who created the federal government when they ratified the Constitution – to smack down their "creature" when their "creature" violates the Constitutional Compact the States made with each other, see Nullification: The Original Right of Self-Defense.

Endnotes:1"Creature" is the word our Founders used – e.g., Federalist No. 33 (5th para) & Jefferson's draft of The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (8th Resolution).2 Art. VII, cl. 1, US Constit., sets forth ratification procedures for our Constitution.3Madison's Virginia Report of 1799-1800 (pp 190-196).4 Madison's Journal of the Federal Convention of 1787 shows that on July 23, 1787, the Delegates discussed who was competent to ratify the proposed new Constitution. Col. Mason said it is "the basis of free Government" that only the people are competent to ratify the new Constitution, and

"...The [State] Legislatures have no power to ratify it. They are the mere creatures of the State Constitutions, and cannot be greater than their creators..."

Madison agreed that State Legislatures were incompetent to ratify the proposed Constitution – it would make essential inroads on the existing State Constitutions, and

"...it would be a novel & dangerous doctrine that a Legislature could change the constitution under which it held its existence...."

It's equally novel & dangerous to say that the Supreme Court may change the Constitution under which it holdsitsexistence.5 It is said England doesn't have a written constitution.6 Acts of Congress which are not authorized by the enumerated powers are void.They are not made "in Pursuance" of the Constitution and have supremacy over nothing. Federalist No. 27 (last para) says:

"...the laws of the Confederacy [the federal government], as to the ENUMERATED and LEGITIMATE objects of its jurisdiction, will become the SUPREME LAW of the land; to the observance of which all officers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in each State, will be bound by the sanctity of an oath. Thus the legislatures, courts, and magistrates, of the respective members [the States], will be incorporated into the operations of the national government AS FAR AS ITS JUST AND CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY EXTENDS..." [capitals are Hamilton's]

See also Federalist No. 33 (last 2 paras) and Federalist No. 78 (10th para).7 John Whitehead mentions the Biblical origin of the common law in The Second American Revolution.8 Art. III, §2, cl.1 delegates to federal courts power to hear "Controversies between Citizens of different States." Much of the litigation conducted in federal courts falls into this category. These lawsuits aren't about the Constitution. Instead, they involve the range of issues people fight about in State Courts: personal injury, breach of contract, business disputes, fighting over property, slander & libel, etc. In deciding these cases, federal judges are expected to follow the "common law" precedents.9 In Federalist No. 78 (next to last para), Hamilton discusses how judges are bound by "precedents" which define and point out their duty in the particular cases which come before them.10 In Federalist No. 83 (8th para), Hamilton says:

"...the...authority of the federal ...[courts]...is declared by the Constitution to comprehend certain cases particularly specified. The expression of those cases marks the precise limits, beyond which the federal courts cannot extend their jurisdiction..."

11 James Madison agreed that the purpose of the "arising under this Constitution" clause is to enable federal courts to enforce the Constitution. At the Virginia Ratifying convention on June 20, 1788, he explained the categories of cases federal courts have authority to hear. As to "cases arising under this Constitution," he said:

"...That causes of a federal nature will arise, will be obvious to every gentleman, who will recollect that the states are laid under restrictions; and that the rights of the union are secured by these restrictions. They may involve equitable as well as legal controversies..."

"...This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is ... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy..."

November 15, 2018Thanks, NeverTrumpers. Are You Happy Now?By Brian C. Joondeph​NeverTrump Republicans have been rabidly obsessed since 2015 to prevent Donald Trump’s nomination, election, and having failed, to join the left in nonstop criticism and condemnation of President Trump. They may be succeeding, but to what end? As they look around at the current political landscape, are they truly happy with the direction of the country? Or is that irrelevant, as long as they can strut around on their high horse, feeling smug, telling each other “I told you so”?The NeverTrump movement began shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. So-called “principled Republicans” were incensed that a loud-mouth from Queens, a TV reality star, a host of beauty pageants, someone never before elected to public office, should challenge the Republican establishment orthodoxy.His tweets and straight talk were unacceptable. Calling out the media and his political opponents ran against the grain of how they thought Republicans should handle themselves in a presidential campaign. Trump did not follow the proper and acceptable savoir faire of John McCain or Mitt Romney, two prominent NeverTrumpers. The fact that both lost their elections to an easily defeatable far-left candidate who damaged the country badly during his eight-year reign of “fundamentally transforming America” seems to be lost on Trump’s GOP critics.The NeverTrump names are familiar. Aside from the two noted above, there are others, all one-time Republicans, although their conservative beliefs have been tossed out the window over political expediency or ego. George Will, Max Boot, Steve Schmidt, Bret Stephens, Jennifer Rubin, and anyone with the last name of Bush. There are many in Congress too – Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Bob Corker, and others.Some of them left the party, with great fanfare, securing regular bookings on CNN and MSNBC to trash Trump and his deplorable supporters. They were puzzled why every Republican didn’t leave the party. They hoped for electoral success for the Democrats, the same political party they once criticized. After the midterm elections, they should be ecstatic.By historical standards, Trump and the Republicans did well in the 2018 midterms. The number of House seats lost was comparable to Ronald Reagan in his first midterm election, and far less than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama lost in their first midterms. Republicans actually gained Senate seats, or so it seemed on election night.Slowly but steadily the election is being overturned. Republican victories on election night are either being contested or have already been overturned, a week later morphing into Democrat victories. Funny that. Were any election night Democrat victories overturned a week later due to the miracle of uncounted or provisional ballots? Election thievery, similar to deep state justice, seems to go in only one direction.The Senate majority, assuming it holds, is a slim one, with no certainty of holding the Republican coalition together given the whims of NeverTrumpers Murkowski, Collins, and a resurrected John McCain in the form of Senator Mitt Romney. Will the next Supreme Court nominee be easily confirmed or will one of them channel their inner McCain, strolling into the Senate chamber with his or her thumb pointed downward?As Mrs. Clinton said after her electoral surprise two years ago, “What Happened?” There are many answers, but much lies at the feet of NeverTrumpers, particularly those in Congress. How many Senators and Representatives believed the Russian collusion hoax, invented by Obama and dutifully reported by the media to the point where they were expecting that Trump would either resign or be impeached before he served one year in office? How many Republicans chose to retire at the end of this Congress, choosing to not go down with what they perceived as a sinking Trump ship, rather than keep their safe incumbent seats, and therefore the House majority?Trump’s signature issues on the campaign trail were immigration and healthcare. He promised to “Build the wall” and “Repeal Obamacare”. Yet he could do neither alone. Both required the assistance of Congress, which was lacking despite these issues being the primary reason Congress was in Republican hands.Congressional leaders balked at funding a border wall, instead choosing to fund Planned Parenthood. The “skinny repeal” of Obamacare crashed and burned when NeverTrump Senator No-Name figuratively gave President Trump the middle finger, but almost literally gave the Senate vote counter a thumbs down, killing the repeal.Was Congressional resistance over policy? Perhaps a little was but most was simply a NeverTrump poke in the eye to the president and his agenda. Not only legislatively did NeverTrumpers hurt their party, but also in giving a reason for the Trump base to not turn out as they did in 2016. The Washington Post looked at turnout by party for the past few elections.In the 2014 midterms, 4 million more Republicans voted than Democrats. In 2018 it was the opposite, as the chart below demonstrates. In addition, in 2018, Democrats turned out 79 percent of their 2016 presidential election voters, compared to only 75 percent for Republicans. Turnout wins elections, but Trump voters may not have turned out to vote for those shouting “NeverTrump!” Despite Trump’s involvement in the midterm campaigns, he wasn’t on the ballot, but members of Congress were.

Source: Washington PostIn my local Congressional dis­­­trict, Rep Mike Coffman was a NeverTrump Republican; his main campaign message was how he would “stand up to President Trump”. How did the midterms turn out for him? Perhaps GOP voters stood up to Mike and sat the election out, since both he and his Democrat opponent were NeverTrump.In 2016, Coffman won 192 thousand votes, earning reelection compared to 160 thousand votes for his Democrat opponent. In 2018, he only received 146 thousand votes while his Democrat opponent won 184 thousand votes. The Democrat won this year, but with fewer votes than C­­­­offman received 2 years ago. Instead, Coffman only garnered only 76 percent of the votes he received just 2 years ago. How much was due to his NeverTrump stance?Nationwide, Republicans stayed home last week. As this chart from the Washington Post demonstrates, 13 states had Democrat vote counts surpassing 2016. Republicans didn’t come close to their 2016 vote counts in any state.

Perhaps voters delivered a message for NeverTrumpers in Congress. If you oppose our President, we oppose you. Democrats will oppose Trump but at least they are honest about it. Retiring Speaker Paul Ryan never missed an opportunity to criticize the President, most recently saying he "knows nothing about" birthright citizenship. In other words, if both choices, the Democrat and the Republican are anti-Trump, why bother voting?NeverTrump commentators didn’t hold back either. Max Boot said, “Donald Trump is the worst person ever to be president.” George Will called Trump, “A sad, embarrassing wreck of a man.” Steve Schmidt, who ran McCain’s losing presidential campaign said, “I left the Republican Party. Now I want Democrats to take over.”Well boys, you have your wish. The party you once were a part of is now in the hands of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff. Your one-time conservative goal of smaller government, a conservative judiciary, and freedom and liberty for all is heading to the waste bin of history. Thanks to your constant haranguing you will instead enjoy illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, identity politics, mob harassment, and a paralyzed Republican president.Your resistance to everything and anything Trump is coming home to roost. Open borders will shift the electoral demographics a permanent shade of blue, the electoral college soon out of reach of any conservative Republican presidential candidate. NeverTrumpers who once revered Reagan, through their myopic pettiness, have given us Kyrsten Sinema and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the new faces of the Democrat Party.All because you don’t like Trump’s tweets or how he revoked drama queen Jim Acosta’s press pass. Thanks a lot.Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.​Read more: Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook_________________________________________________________

Another November, another Election Day debacle. Leave it to the State of Florida to once again (think Bush v. Gore) expose the severe shortcomings of the American election system. Though, to be fair, it isn’t only Florida; Arizona and Georgia are also in the proverbial “big soup” this time around.The point of this article is not to systematically condemn the American election system, nor detail its deficiencies. As any observer is painfully aware, there are legal, partisan, and political reasons why the system remains – basically – broken. Nor shall we evaluate any contemporary claims of voter fraud; for these arguments will be lost and won by an army of lawyers, sent from D.C. to the states which have bungled yet another political election.For the sake of both completeness and brevity, listed below are some broad complicating factors of the U.S. electoral system:

Generally speaking, states establish their own election laws – subject to Federal oversight – essentially creating fifty different regimes, each with their own idiosyncrasies and complications.

Gerrymandering, which allows the creation of customized electoral districts to the benefit of one party or the other.

Voter participation in the United States rarely exceeds 50-55%%, which is amongst the lowest in the so-called developed world. Therefore, approximately just 26-28% of eligible voters determine the direction of the entire country.

Electoral College: In Presidential elections, electors (not voters) ultimately decide who wins the office. This is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Wow!

Rather than focus on the various problems, we seek here to present examples from other countries where the election systems do work, for context and fermentation of ideas domestically.A Look around the WorldAustralia

Population: 24.6 million

Voter participation: Greater than 90%

Nota Bene: Voting has been compulsory since 1924. Non-voting results in a fine, and elections are typically held on Saturdays. Voters are not required to present identification.

Brazil

Population: 209.3 million

Voter participation: 79.54% (2016)

Nota Bene: Compulsory voting for all “literate” citizens between the ages of 18-70 years old, dating back to 1932. Consequences of non-voting include exclusion from government funds, and potentially being prohibited from obtaining a passport. Identification is required and voting is entirely electronic.

France

Population: 67.12 million

Voter participation: 67.9% (2017)

Nota Bene: France is one of the most centralized countries, administratively, in the world. Voters use paper ballots and are required to show identification. Presidential elections are every five years, and it is typically a two-round process, assuming that no candidate receives more than 50% in the first round.

Germany

Population: 82.79 million

Voter participation: 76.2% (2017)

Nota Bene: Germany has a two vote system, in which votes are cast for both candidates and for party (for representative purposes in the Bundestag (i.e., federal parliament). Elections are managed by the Ministry of Interior which sets forth regulations, which includes presenting identification. There are election management bodies, primarily the Federal Returning Officer, who is appointed by the Ministry of Interior.

Italy

Population: 60.59 million

Voter participation: ~73% (2018)

Nota Bene: Italy has a “parallel” voting system, in which 37% of seats are allocated by “first past the post,” and the remaining 63% are allocated proportionately. On a paper ballot, the voter can cast his ballot in three different ways: basically, different combinations of candidates and parties. Voter identification at the polling station is required. Representatives of the two leading parties then decide how to form the coalition. Finally, the Italian President first validates the proposed coalition, and secondly the list of ministers, to form the government. The President is an unelected official who, with respect to the formation of a government, is somewhat comparable to the power of the Queen of England.

Israel

Population: 8.71 million

Voter participation: 72.36% (2015)

Nota Bene: Voters in Israel vote for a party, not the candidate. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is proportionally representative of the votes cast. Voters present their national identification card, complete a ballot, place it in an envelope, and slip it into a blue ballot box.

Japan

Population: 120.8 million

Voter participation: 53.83% (2017)

Nota Bene: Japan’s voter participation rate is on-par with the United States’. Voters must present voter cards. Ballots are completed by writing in the candidate’s name. Elections for the House of Representatives involve two votes: one for the district candidate, and one for the party. Electronic voting first occurred in 2002, and early voting was introduced in 2003.

Nota Bene: Registered voters can vote either in person, by post, or by proxy. Except in Northern Ireland, it is not required to show identification. Voters complete a paper ballot and drop it into a ballot box. Follow the close of polls (10 pm), the ballot box is immediately taken to a central counting location.

ConclusionsWith the notable exceptions of Australia and the United Kingdom (two English-speaking countries), each one of the above countries requires a form of identification to be presented by the voter. With the exception Japan, voter turnout is significantly higher in these countries than in the United States (25-35%). Countries with compulsory voting – Australia and Brazil – unsurprisingly have the highest voter participation – 90% and 79% respectively.Furthermore, the authors searched for recent examples of voter fraud in these countries, and were unable to find any eminent instances. Unlike the United States, which has had multiple prominent election problems that have made international news, a comparable example among the countries analyzed cannot be readily identified. Indeed, a U.S. level of election shenanigans seems to be reserved for what we typically call a “banana republic.”A Divided Country, Embarrassed on the World StageEver since the Greeks invented democracy in ancient times, societies have been voting. From a technological standpoint, it is a very basic procedure. Even Iraq, practically ravished by wars since the 1980s, votes using a straightforward and understandable process: ink on the index finger identifies each one who has cast a vote.Not only do contested and contentious elections further exacerbate an already divided country, but they are a black mark on the reputation of the United States on the international scene. Allegedly the leading country in the world today, it is almost impossible, for our allies and foes alike, to comprehend how we cannot even master a task so simple as a routine election.Perhaps instead of sending two opposing battalions of lawyers to litigate the vote counting, it is time for meaningful reform that addresses both voter participation and the integrity of each and every vote.______________________________________________________________

Photo(s) of the Week

President Trump gives a hug and kiss to Jordan McLinn who suffers from muscular dystrophy before signing the “Right to Try Act.” This is OUR PRESIDENT! #RightToTryAct

A Significant CrisisFBI & DOJ?

Quote of the Week

"Once again, it is incredible how Obama and the progressive liberals, with the help of mainstream media can so easily convince the American people that a lie is the truth and the truth is a lie. In fact, it would be dazzling if it weren't so disturbing." Plundered by Michael S. Coffman, Ph.D.

“No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.” --General James Mattis